Motor Industry News

The Honda Jazz is the UK's most reliable new car scoring 95% in the latest Which? reliability survey. There were no breakdowns and only a handful of problems out of the 406 models sampled. Excellent for a car that costs as little as £8,795.

Seven cars came in equal second place with 92% for reliability: Honda's Accord and CR-V, the Mazda 3, Renault Clio, Toyota Corolla, Vauxhall Corsa and the Subaru Forester.

No luxury car attained a 'good' rating for reliability. BMW's 5 Series and Jaguars S-type both score 83% although they were 'average' overall. Even the Mercedes-Benz E-class has its share of problems, with 32% of owners requiring repairs in the last 12 months.

At the other end of the scale the least reliable new car in was Ford's MPV, the Focus C-Max, which scored 78%. Others rated poorly for reliability are the Jaguar X-type, Nissan Primera, Renault Megane and Renault Scénic all managed just 80% .

Which? also assesses satisfaction with servicing and repairs at franchised car dealers. Brands performing well for model reliability also score highly for customer satisfaction.

Lexus come out the best - more than three-quarters (78%) of owners are very satisfied with servicing and repairs. Porsche scores well with 73% while Honda comes third with 70%. Several prestige brands are near the bottom of the league. Alfa Romeo (joint bottom with Chrysler on 31%), Jeep (34%) and Mercedes-Benz (45%) all leave much to be desired when it comes to customer satisfaction with repairs and servicing.

The reliability scores are a blend of breakdowns (50%), faults (25%) and niggles (25%) recorded over a 12 month period on cars up to two years old. Higher scores mean more reliable, lower scores mean less reliable. Breakdowns are given more weight as they are particularly inconvenient.

On average, 5% of new cars broke down in the last year, 27% had faults and 19% had niggles.

A 'fault' means something had to be replaced - for example, a failed heater fan and 'niggles' are annoying problems, such as squeaky trim, that didn't put the car off the road.

The owners' survey was sent to 80,000 Which? readers in January 2006 and data was collected on 32,550 cars.

Dealers rated for servicing and repairs

Percentage of very satisfied customers (sample size shown in brackets)